Africa

Africa ()   link
File:Africa 1914.jpg
The "dark continent", almost completely overrun by European colonialists, now full of nominally independent governments. Its exploitation continues in a range of more modern, complex, forms, such as land grabbing.

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia.

With nearly 1.4 billion people as of 2021, it accounts for about 18% of the world's human population.

Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita which has been ascribed to many factors, most importantly to colonialism and neocolonialism.

Africa has a large quantity of natural resources and food resources, including diamonds, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, natural gas, cocoa beans, and tropical fruit.

Colonisation

Full article: Berlin Conference

Almost all of Africa was colonised by European powers, especially Britain and France. Modern Ethiopia is an exception. "European powers worked hard to keep knowledge of its crimes in Africa away from public scrutiny."

Decolonisation

Nominal independence was granted to the former colonies throughout the 20^th century.

Land grabbing

Full article: Land grabbing

Africa has undergone a boom in land grabbing as foreign investors sought assets likely to be unaffected by, or even to benefit from the global economic events after 2008.

Terrorism

ISIS, according to UN. counter-terrorism officials posed a rising threat amid political instability in West Africa, including in coups and Russian military and US PMC influence.

China

China's flagship economic cooperation program is bouncing back after a lull during the global pandemic, with Africa a primary focus since the 2020s.

Watch on YouTube

The Opioid Crisis Sweeping Africa

Militarisation

The US military has a "quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent", which has been termed a "shadow war".

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“Of the 53 armed forces in Africa, 41 (or 77 percent) received US military training.”
 (April 1999) 

Africa was the location of several high-profile coups in the 2020s, with even the first elected presidents to be removed. Western CCM pointed for most, including the ones in Mali and Niger, to Russia, as attempts to gain minerals and fossil fuels for Russia while also causing mass migrant waves to Europe to cause right-wing governments to win in EU countries, causing even war criminal Tony Blair to return to British politics and publish a warning in a column that Russia is trying to "destabilise" Europe by causing "extremism and migration to come to Europe". Blair opted for a new war against Russia in Africa.

In Ethiopia, Amharan Special Forces withdraw from the Tigray Region, and soon thereafter also withdraw from nearly all of Ethiopia. US and France-backed President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger is toppled in a coup d'état after members of his presidential guard and the armed forces seize control of the country and install General Abdourahamane Tchiani as leader of a military junta, the 6^th coup in West Africa starting in 2020. In September 2023 the Russian SVR gave out a press release in which it stated that the US is considering the assassination of the coup leaders.

References